350,000 civilians, mostly women and children, have fled Russian-led assault, says UN BEIRUT, AMMAN: Intense fighting between pro-regime forces and opposition fighters in Syria’s Idlib province killed at least 39 fighters, a war monitor said on Thursday. The violence, which saw airstrikes, shelling and ground combat, further buried a cease-fire announced by Russia on Sunday in Idlib, the last major opposition bastion in the country. Russian-backed regime and allied forces took two villages in their advance toward the key town of Maaret Al-Numan. According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighting flared in areas south of Maaret Al-Numan, the key target of the Syrian regime’s latest military offensive. Among the dead were members of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, a group that includes fighters from the former Al-Qaeda affiliate. Twenty-nine regime troops and allied militia were also killed in the fighting, said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the observatory. He added that regime forces were now just 7 km from Maaret Al-Numan, a town that was one of the bastions of the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s rule. Nearly nine years into the conflict, protests against the regime are still held in some of the province’s towns. Reporters saw scenes of chaos after the strikes, that blew several buildings in an industrial zone to smithereens. The bombardment engulfed several vehicles, leaving torched corpses of motorists trapped inside. In Idlib itself, 18 civilians were killed in airstrikes on Wednesday, shattering the truce brokered by Moscow and opposition-supporter Ankara. Mustafa, who runs a repair shop in the area, was lucky to escape with his life. He had just left the store to pick up some spare parts. He said he returned to find the shop destroyed and his four employees trapped under rubble. It was not immediately clear if they had survived. Exposing themselves to a harsh winter, around 350,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, have fled the renewed offensive since early December, and have sought shelter in border areas near Turkey. The humanitarian situation continued to deteriorate as a result of the “escalating” hostilities, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. “This latest wave of displacement compounds an already dire humanitarian situation on the ground in Idlib,” David Swanson, Amman-based UN regional spokesman for Syria, said. Karen AbuZayd, a UN war crimes investigator on Syria, said many of the destroyed or closed schools in opposition-held areas were now being used as shelters for people fleeing the violence. The latest wave of displaced people comes on top of close to 400,000 people who fled earlier fighting for the safety of camps near the Turkish border.